A man in his 70s who continually drugged a woman with sleeping pills while sexually assaulting her led the woman to her death. The man has been arrested and is now facing trial. The amount of sleeping pills the man used for the sexual assault spanned 14 days.
The Southern Seoul District Prosecutor’s Office announced on the 1st that the man (Aged 74) has been detained and indicted on charges of rape, rape resulting in death, and violation of the Narcotics Control Act.
The man is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman (Aged 58), leading to her death. The incidents occurred while they stayed together at a motel in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, from March 29 to April 3.
According to the investigation, the suspect secretly administered 42 sleeping pills, equivalent to a 14-day dose, to the victim in five separate instances. It was found that the suspect continued to sexually assault the victim, who had lost consciousness and was virtually motionless due to the sleeping pills, and continued to administer the drugs.
The victim died of a pulmonary embolism and was found by the motel owner in the room on April 3.
The police arrested the suspect in Cheongju the next day. It was also investigated that the suspect drugged and sexually assaulted the victim in the same manner by administering 21 sleeping pills in February. After the transfer, the prosecution conducted supplementary investigations, including a search of the hospital that prescribed the sleeping pills. They applied the charge of rape resulting in death to the suspect, judging that there was unfulfilled intentional homicide.
The suspect had been prescribed three weeks’ worth of sleeping pills from the hospital. They contained zolpidem, alprazolam, and triazolam, which are psychotropic drugs. Around the time of the crime, the suspect was found to have been prescribed four weeks’ worth of sleeping pills again all at once, citing the hardship of long-distance visits. The prosecution requested administrative action against the doctor in charge who excessively prescribed sleeping pills to the suspect through ‘split prescriptions.’